


Within Me Softly Burn

by dawnstruck



Category: Boondock Saints (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Arthur Rimbaud - Freeform, Character Study, Co-Dependency, Gen, Happy Ending, M/M, Twincest, mild self-mutiliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 07:23:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2142159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawnstruck/pseuds/dawnstruck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are put into solitary confinement and communicate through prayers and dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Within Me Softly Burn

**Author's Note:**

> I've chosen lines from various poems by Arthur Rimbaud. Some of the added translations are more poetic themselves and not necessarily transfered into English word for word.

_Je me crois en enfer, donc j'y suis. - I believe I am in Hell, therefore I am._

Solitary confinement.

A punishment reserved for especially dangerous convicts. For psychopaths and paedophiles who would harm others or be harmed themselves if put in with the rest of the prisoners.

It's for their own pretection, they are told. And it's not entirely a surprise, but it still comes as a shock.

They have an hour each day when they are allowed to walk in circles on the courtyard outside, get some some air, stretch their legs a little. But even then they are alone.

And all of that wouldn't even be so bad if it weren't for the fact that solitary doesn't just mean apart from the criminals trying to get their hands on them. It means apart from each other as well.

The MacManus twins have never been separated. Since their conception they have been in each other's space, kicking and spitting and touching and whispering.

Instead of pacing around in his tiny cell or hanging off the bars of his even tinier window, trying to soak up some sparse daylight, Connor stands with his left palm pressed up against the wall that faces in the direction of where he just knows Murphy's cell is located.

He can feel it through the layers of brick and concrete and plaster and tile and empty space, can feel that Murphy has his right hand up as well, mirroring his stance, veritas and aequitas, forever juxtaposed.

 

_Si j’ai du goût, ce n’est guère que pour la terre et les pierres. - I only find within my bones, A taste for eating earth and stones._

On their fourth day, Connor requests some reading material. Something in French would be nice, preferably some poetry, Rimbaud if the prison library happens to be that extrensive.

He is lucky in that regard, but when the guard responsible hands him the thick book he does so with a strange look on his face.

“Problem, sir?” Connor asks, hoping not to come across as too impertinent.

“Is that meant for some sort of communication?” the guard wants to know and Connor frowns, holding up the tome as if to show how harmless it is, “French poetry?”

“Yeah,” the guard scratches his forehead, “To get some messages through to your brother.”

“With all due respect,” Connor cocks an eyebrow, “Why the hell would you think that?”

“Well,” at least the man doesn't seem offended, “It's just that ten minutes after you asked for that book your brother wanted to read the same. Just struck me as weird, is all.”

“We read French poetry when we are sad and shit,” Connor lies deadpan.

When the guard leaves, he sits down on his narrow cot and reverently runs his fingers across the pages of the book.

 

_Je suis intact, et ça m'est égal. - I am intact and I don't give a damn._

His wounds are healing slowly.

He assesses the extent of his injuries, inspects his scars and supposes that he should be grateful to be alive. Count himself lucky because their father didn't make it out, but they did.

His wounds heal but there are still phantom pains all over. Not only lingering in the shiny tissue of his new scars but in places where he was never hurt at all.

Murphy got shot in the leg, he remembers when his thigh is still throbbing one evening.

He lifts his hand to his shoulder and digs his thumb into the half-closed bullet wound there. A sharp pain races through his body and leaves him breathless.

He hopes that somewhere down the bleak hallway Murphy is lying in the dark and feeling the same.

 

_Mille rêves en moi font de douces brûlures. – A thousand dreams within me softly burn._

They took his crucifix, his rosaries, so he wouldn't try to strangle himself or anyone else.

Everyday Connor kneels on the cold hard ground, touching the tattooed cross on the inside of his arm whenever he'd move on to the next prayer bead.

Hail Marys fill his mouth and his lungs, giving him life like air. The air is stale, though, rancid and cancerous. You need more than oxygen to truly breathe and stay alive.

That night as he rests upon the thin mattress and his eyes slowly fall shut, he dreams of genuflecting in front of the altar of their church in Boston, light streaming through the tesselated windows, his hands folded in prayer, palms slick with warm wetness.

And at first he thinks its sweat or water but then he realizes that it is blood staining his skin, and he tries to wipe it off, smears his hands along the smooth wooden surface of Jesus on the cross, the man whose feet he used to kiss with chaste lips, until their messiah is covered in guilty handprints.

But the blood just won't come off and it takes Connor several frantic moments to notice that's because it is his own blood, pouring out of deep gushing woods in his wrists.

And he can feel his life seeping from those eternal wells of pain, can feel himself grow faints and light-headed, and the sunlight from outside grows stronger and stronger, illuminating the cold marble tomb that is the church, until Connor is bathed in a jiwsaw puzzle of multi-colored luminiscence.

He wakes in the dark with a silent gasp and there are tears drying on his cheeks. He moves to wipe them off but his hand never reaches his eyes. Instead he only lifts his left wrist towards his mouth as if to kiss it, parting his lips and pressing the flat of his tongue against the racing pulse.

When his teeth dig into his flesh and pierce through his skin, there is no pain. The metallic taste of blood fills his mouth but it feels like a blessing.

When he finally passes out he is not afraid.

 

_Un homme qui veut se mutiler est bien damné, n'est-ce pas? - A man who wants to mutilate himself is certainly damned, is he not?_

He wakes in the cool grey light of the late morning and it's too bright for him to still be his cell, but too dark to be Paradise. Instead he recognizes the prison's hospital ward where they had first found themselves after the confrontation with Luigi had gone to shit.

This time, though, it is not Romeo lying still asleep in one of the beds, but Murphy. He's hooked up to an IV line and has got a thick bandage around his right wrist. He looks horribly pale in the starched white sheets that smell of too much bleach.

There ought to be a guard around somewhere but when Connor notices that he isn't even tied to his bed, he sits up carefully. The room spins lazily but he gets up anyway, grabbing the frame that holds his own infusion bag and shuffling over to the other bed.

With utmost caution as not to jostle his brother, he climbs onto the mattress, inching closer and tugging the edge of the thin blanket over himself. Gently, he intertwines their hands until their ruined wrists are aligned and Connor knows that they do not only share matching tattoos but matching scars as well. After all, blood is thicker than ink.

Maybe it is the movement or the closeness or something else entirely, but Murphy stirs. Connor's breath catches a little. It is the first time in two weeks that they have even been in the same room, much less touched the other.

Murphy turns his head and Connor does the same. For a moment they just look at each other; Murphy squeezes his hand around Connor's in acknowledgement.

“They can't keep us separated fore'er,” Murphy says, his voice between a whisper and a croak.

“They can't,” Connor agrees but there is a tight feeling in his guts, like dread and desperation. Because who knows how long they will be locked up here. Who knows whether they'll ever get out.

“I can't live like 'is,” despite his earlier words Murphy sounds resigned, “I'd rather die.”

Connor can only nod silently. At least in death they'd be together.

“We'll get out,” he promises the impossible, leaning close and pressing a kiss to Murphy's brow.

 

_Je parvins à faire s'évanouir dans mon esprit toute l'espérance humaine. - I found I could extinguish all human hope from my soul._

They are separated once again. Connor wonders whether he should feel more guilty about barely wasting a thought on Da or Romeo. It all seems so unimportant. All he can focus on is the prospect of rotting away in this hellhole without ever seeing his brother again.

So he prowls through his cell like a starved tiger behind the bars of a cage, feral, listless and half-mad with hunger.

Three days after they were released from the hospital ward, he tears off his bandages, tears into his flesh a second time and prays for the best.

Once more, he wakes in an uncomfortable hospital bed, staring up at the white ceiling. Once more, Murphy is in the bed next to his, but this time he can hear muffled voices from behind a privacy curtain.

“Dangerously co-dependent,” he hears one of the doctors say, “Treatable, of course, after extensive sessions with a psychologist.”

“We don't have that time,” another voice claims, possibly a guard or even the director of the prison, “These madmen have to stay alive until they can be brought before court.”

“In that case,” the doctor sighs heavily, “The only solution seems to put them back together. Which would be giving them exactly what they want and destructive to their health.”

“Can't be more destructive than them chewing their fucking arms off,” the other man grits out; there's a pause and when he continues there's something like slight wonderment in his voice, “We just can't figure out how they managed to injure themselves in the exact same manner at the exact same time. It's like they are fucking mirror images of each other.”

When Connor rolls his head to the side Murphy's grey gaze meets his and a grin spreads over their faces.

 

_Je est un autre. - I is another._

There's a bunkbed in their new cell, but they drag down the meager mattresses and set up their bedstead on the floor. It's not exactly comfortable, but Connor feels more at ease knowing Murphy is right next to him.

He's not surprised when Murphy starts tugging at Connor's undershirt, pulling it up and off him. Connor willingly lifts his arms and once Murph is bare-chested as well he closes them around his brother.

That was always the easiest way to stop them from screaming their lungs out as babies, Ma told them. Let them snuggle up together with as much skin contact as possible. It always made them calm down immediately. At first she'd put them in separate cribs but quickly realized that they would have none of it. Probably because of the familiarity of being pressed up close in their mother's womb.

It's more than that, Connor has long since come to suspect. There's this inner pull between them, their bodies and their souls, and he doesn't care whether it's nature or God given, but it's all they have and all they've ever truly known.

After lights out, Murphy pulls at his shoulders, directing him over him, and Connor braces his elbows on either side of his head before descending into a kiss.

And Connor would have wondered ages ago whether maybe all of their tragedies are caused by this one specific sin, this one sind they have never confessed to anyone, never even talked about with each other, if it didn't feel so right. Feel right to mingle their spirits as they breathe into each other and Murphy groans in relief.

They lie like that in the darkness, engrossing themselves in the other, trading kisses and whispered words of reassurance and promise.

When they fall asleep they are still wrapped up in each other. From now on, everything will be alright.

 

_Coda_

A week later they suddenly have a lawyer who subtly lets them know that she has been sent by Smecker.

She even more subtly lets them in on the plan that has been worked out to break them free.

It is still weeks before they finally stand underneath an open sky once again.

“Each of you owes me a blowjob,” Smecker tells them smugly, “But I think you'll be too busy sucking each other's dick, so I guess I'll pass.”

Connor knows it's a joke but he still places a possessive hand on Murphy's shoulder while Murphy offers a 'Touch him and you're dead'-kinda look.

“Tetchy fags,” Smecker huffs, “I should have let you rot in jail. They might have been able to do something about that co-dependency after all.”

But it's more than that and even Smecker seems to know.

“Where ta now?” Murph asks because life as a fugitive is never easy. Connor only grins and shrugs.

'Where to' doesn't really matter. It's more about a 'with whom'.

 

_Ah ! remonter à la vie ! Jeter les yeux sur nos difformités. Et ce poison, ce baiser mille fois maudit ! Ma faiblesse, la cruauté du monde ! Mon Dieu, pitié, cachez-moi, je me tiens trop mal ! - Je suis caché et je ne le suis pas._   
_C'est le feu qui se relève avec son damné._

_Ah! To return to life! To stare at our deformities. And this poison, this eternally accursed embrace! My weakness, and the world's cruelty! My God, have pity, hide me, I can't control myself at all! - I am hidden, and I am not._   
_And as the Damned soul rises, so does the fire._


End file.
